In 1979, Basu Chatterjee made Baaton Baaton Mein and unobtrusively brought to us the dating and courtship rituals of a community that was till then either caricatured or just overlooked in Hindi cinema. Nancy Perreira and Tony Braganza…
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Matriarchal manipulation in a patriarchal world is depicted unsparingly in Usha Priyamwada’s Pachpan Khambe Laal Deewarein (Now playing on Prasar Bharti). The mother resentful of her lecturer daughter’s comfortable life in her college residence because the younger daughters…
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“Start with hope..always start with hope. We went from being a shitty team to become one of the biggest dynasties in the sport and all it needed was one match to light this fire,” says Michael Jordan at…
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In 1947, my grandparents brought three children and the remains of an uprooted life from Pakistan to India in a train. One of those children was my mother. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the…
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Three documentaries streaming right now show the ultimate culmination of the Bois Locker Room culture. And what happens when one gender is taught to mistrust its instincts of self-preservation and the other does not even learn something as…
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In Sudip Sharma’s Paatal Lok (Now streaming on Amazon. Co written by Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra. Directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy), India’s disowned inhabit the headlines we turn away from. A young…
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Mediocrity is king on Indian television. Nothing demonstrates this better than Sanjeev Kapoor walking into the set of Junior Master Chef India on a red carpet to the tune of Azeemo-shaan Shehenshah! The Shehenshah in question has multiple shows on his imaginatively titled channel Food Food and another one on a mainstream channel. Sometimes he […]
Rekha will soon be seen playing Super Nani but the icon turns into an age-defying model in the film to teach her errant family a lesson. No, dowdy weepies for the lady.There are many faces of Bhanurekha Ganesan. The little girl who danced on a table in a white frilly frock to the tune […]
I’ve been a fan of television since the 70s, when bits and pieces of shows first started trickling out as though they were tail-ends of meteors and the grand spectacle was yet to come in a kind of reversal of magic. It came alright, and I was snared forever. So when I say Breaking Bad […]
There is this moment in Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox where Irrfan Khan’s Saajan Fernandez says a name aloud for the first time. And it reminds one of Jess C. Scott’s famous quote, “When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.” He […]
At a recent reality show, Rohit Shetty ribbed a young contestant about why he watched Shahrukh Khan only on TV. Did he not watch movies in the theatre? The young boy replied that in his village, there was no movie theatre. Shetty smiled good-naturedly and exulted, ‘If Chennai Express becomes a hit, I will build a movie […]
I read somewhere, “Nothing should live that isn’t a labour of great, great love.” But seriously, if nothing should live that isn’t a labour of great love, how come the people and things that are, sometimes vanish into the mist of time? It’s nothing you haven’t contemplated before. There ought to be some place beyond, a […]
We recall Black Friday, perhaps the most perfect film in Anurag Kashyap’s oeuvre, timeless and relevant still because of what it says and the righteous rage it exhibits against the failures that allow intolerance to thrive. There is a 12-minute chase scene in the first half of Black Friday between a few police men and a […]
Most people need a movie review like they need a nail trim at a salon. It’s an option and sure we love one but we can live without it. Ofcourse, you’d like an indication of some sort on what to expect of a movie. That’s fair. But don’t we have that well before it’s time for a review […]
“Utaar Ke Phenk De Sab Janjaal Beete Kal Ka Har Kankal Tere Talve Hain Teri Naal” ** So when you peel and throw all conflicts and let the skeletons of the past go and your heels are like hooves with horseshoes, then you don’t run. You fly. And sometimes in life, the full circle spans […]
An authentic actor’s face is unmistakable, unforgettable. The eyes speak volumes. Every frown stands out. Every snarl registers. When the lip curls, the nostrils flare, the forehead furrows, you watch without blinking, without a moment of doubt that the emotion playing out before you is real. To call an actor real is anomalous but what […]
It is the season of love gone wrong. From Aashiqui-2 to Raanjhanaa to The Great Gatsby to Lootera, it is as if we are being told, “watch out. Before you know, there will be a forest fire within that will spare nothing and no one.” As if love beyond a certain permissible degree of intensity […]
He looks like a tousled philosopher, sounds like a Zen teacher, walks like a giant in a world crawling with Lilliputians and drives chefs to a point where the impossible becomes normal. He is Marco Pierre White, widely known as the father of modern cooking, the youngest British chef to get three Michelin stars and probably the […]